Categorization and Classification
by Shadowesque13
Summary: Breaking down the Doctor. Unwittingly unraveling him through senses, one not normally thought of. His companions seem good at this. Ninth Doctor from the perspective of Rose and Jack.
1. Chapter 1

Categorization and Classification  
by Shadowesque13  
**Chapter:** 1 of 2  
**Rating:** PG  
**Genre:** General  
**Summary:** Breaking down the Doctor. Unwittingly unraveling him through senses, one not normally thought of. His companions seem good at this. Rose's chapter.  
**Disclaimer:** I don't own anything of Doctor Who (and Talrin IIIis a randomly made-up planet). Er, don't ask where the BPAL bit came from. I don't own it, either (which you should look up if you don't know).  
**A/N:** Challenge for an LJ comm.

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Rose wondered if the leather jacket had something to do with it.

Whenever she was around the Doctor, there was something about the way he smelled—like any normal person would notice, going into someone's house for the first time or three, someone putting on a new scent of perfume, that kind of normal (as normal, perhaps, as the situation would allow)—but this wasn't normal.

Which she felt sounded a bit unfair. It was something familiar and close, yet so radically different; the scent itself was welcome, but on a person it was just…odd. Very odd. There was a smell that lingered all through the TARDIS, again like anyone else's home having its own unique scent, but she'd started to grow so used to it that it mattered little to her what the small, vague, wafting scent was. It was somewhat like him, yet, like a person and their home, was different from the person, just similar. This was ignored for a time. It was when she got next to him, held his hand, hugged him that it caught her attention—so close to smell something underneath the leather. She knew what leather smelled like, so it was something else, something under that. Once she had been tempted to ask about some alien cologne, if perhaps he wore some, and then maybe hope to get a fun story out of that, but she then got distracted, and it never really bothered to cross her mind again.

It was something dark, she decided. Though dark was such an awkward word to use with a smell. She tried associating words one used to describe various BPAL scents, like the kind she read on the forums (while hogging Mickey's computer) before ordering some, when she could. Dark was too vague. Heavy—no. It wasn't heavy, it was very light. Barely there beneath the leather. Ignore the leather, she told herself, and it was something else altogether. Which, to her, seemed weird, that it would be dark yet not heavy, but then, they didn't really have to go hand in hand, necessarily. Not sweet, either—she would have found that very strange on him anyway—and not heavy. Something warm, very warm. Woody, even. Earthy, though she immediately mentally disposed of the word, the irony of it distracting. Deep, drawing her in, yet it wasn't heavy. Why did he have to be so full of contradiction and confusion in everything, even the things that should be so simple as smell? In the times when he held her close, so close, she became tempted to lick the skin of his neck, just a bit, just to see if, perhaps, taste would help clear things up anymore. She always refrained, of course.

But it was something slightly mossy, rough. Rough like bark on a tree, not like jagged edges. Which was something sort of surprising to her; she had always expected that something about him would be sharp other than his words and personality (at times), but it was only rough. It was oddly clean, though, not dirty like the image her adjectives conjured up. No, mossy was, also, the wrong word; it was too wet a word, and this was dry. Not desert dry, and not storm wet. Perhaps between?

It was frustrating, all of these words that didn't seem at all to describe _smells _as it did some forest scene. It wasn't that he smelled of one, not really; it was more than that; it was different, but when she pondered about it, really let her mind wander, her mind came up with memories of falling leaves and brightly coloured ones still on trees, a chilly breeze, that smell of autumn. Something about theautumn came into her head, something rather close to that. Walking down the street with some crunching leaves beneath her feet, and Shareen getting her to stay out a bit later instead of going home to jump into some piles in the park, and the scarf wrapped around her neck. Something about autumn.

Which was comforting and irritating all at the same time, because how, then, would one describe that scent? And wouldn't it change throughout the world, too? How could she find the words to describe a London October? And even if she could find said words, that description wouldn't be right, not quite, not really—the Doctor didn't smell like October, it only made her think of October; there was more, there was a difference.

This, she finally decided, was attributed to him being alien. Because why would he smell like something she knew, anyway? He _ought _to smell different and alien. Except she always forgot that, and it was a rather comforting smell in any event.

A London October with something else laced in it. She didn't want to give up, and she probably wouldn't, anyway. Rose was normally bound and determined when she set her mind on something, and one of those things was on figuring out the Doctor as much as she could. This, apparently, included his smell. October and leather and something else, maybe a lot else, maybe it was something akin also to the marketplace of Talrin III—eclectic. But not confusing. Less foody smells, more just the mix of things, and really, he did smell a little like there anyway, but that was, she reasoned, because they had only just come from there two days (days, hours, minutes, weeks) ago, so they all faintly smelled of there.

She wouldn't be truly happy until she knew exactly what else made up this smell, of course. Well, that wasn't quite true…she was truly happy just being around him and not in danger. She would just have that irritating little hum of questioning until she found out. Just plain saying 'it's because he's alien' didn't exactly cut it for the moment. She knew that was the reason she couldn't figure it out (or she assumed so, anyway), but he couldn't just smell like that and leave something about it a mystery—she liked unraveling his mysteries when she could. Maybe he was just a mix of things, a mix of all places, all species. He was a wanderer, after all, so why wouldn't he smell like various items? It wasn't like she had anyone to compare his scent to…maybe he was unique just because he was an amalgamation of all things. And perhaps, then, she would pick him apart.


	2. Chapter 2

Categorization and Classification  
by Shadowesque13  
**Chapter:**2 of 2  
**Rating:** PG  
**Genre:** General  
**Summary:** Breaking down the Doctor. Unwittingly unraveling him through senses, one not normally thought of. His companions seem good at this. Jack's chapter.  
**Disclaimer:** I don't own anything of Doctor Who.  
**A/N:** Challenge for an LJ comm.

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Jack smelled smoke upon the Doctor.

This was quite definite; the Doctor smelled of smoke. He was rather certain of it. Something akin to wood burning. Yes, he had that smell of _fire_, if fire itself had a scent, of burning wood, of the smoke that came off of it, of ashes. Ashes and charcoal.

The whole of the TARDIS held a similar scent all through it, something that reminded him of, perhaps, a cigarette, though completely without that _stink_ of it. Fire and ashes, something that was leftover from a blaze. It was warm and comfortable. Many nights he fell asleep to the warmth that the ship provided—not physical heat, but the soft, warm colours and the scent that was warm.

Her scent was warm, as was his, but his was less comforting. Perhaps not less _comforting_; that wasn't fair at all for him to say. Being around the Doctor in-general was just about as comfortable as he's ever been. But there was something about it that was slightly…off-putting, perhaps. Not that it wasn't right. It was deeper, far darker. That was what he was looking for, darker. It was far darker than the smell of the TARDIS, which was generally very light and nearly unnoticeable to begin with.

Fire was, generally, dangerous, and smelling of things associated with fire made one seem dangerous. The Doctor didn't, of course, have to _smell _that way for Jack to know he was dangerous—had a dangerous side to him, that is. A darker side. Smoke lingered, and ashes were charred remains, and fire stained everything black. He wondered, sometimes, about the literals when he thought about the scent. It wasn't strong in the slightest, and the leather did well to mix in, blend, hide it. One only noticed it when they, say, weren't being chased by very nasty aliens or weren't mesmerized by a bold, bright, amazing sight. Sometimes he wanted to joke and ask if the Doctor had just saved some kid from a burning building, but always he refrained. It wouldn't be proper. Not that Jack was a proper kind of guy from the start, but something about it sounded like a very bad idea to say to his face.

In fact, to a far lesser extent, it reminded him of his days in Pompeii when he was doing one of his self-cleaning cons on 'Volcano Day'. The heat, the burning, the fire sweeping through, the ashes falling from the sky. He'd never given it much thought; it was always make sure the con went well, make sure he was nowhere near where he had been the last time he came (about three times, he figured), and make surehe gotout of there beforehe wasblasted out of existence like the rest of the people who were to be buried under it all. Never before, during the cons, had he given them much thought at all, especially about the people. Not that he could save them. He hadn't the ability, for starters—his personal transportation device carried only one. And it violated so many rules about time travel. He never was one for rules, but even he knew well enough not to mess around too much in the fabric of time much if at all. The Doctor would know all about that.

And there it was, coming right back to the beginning like a giant circle. Before, through conversations and experiences and sometimes just through the look on his face, he had learned that the Doctor had always had hard choices to make. The more Jack thought about it, the more he wondered if there _had _in fact been some event—some major, devastating event—that made the smoky scent adhere to his flesh like it had always been a part of him. He'd seen fires before, explosions, massive ones in his day. Hell, just sticking around the London Blitz for a while was enough to make anyone used to it, which was, perhaps, why he hadn't given it any thought at all until lately.

But this was preposterous. He had nothing in regards to evidence that the Doctor hadn't always smelled this way; he had no indication that whatever happened—for he was positive that something had indeed happened—wasn't just some regular explosion that he had gotten himself caught up in somehow. He vaguely wondered if his old uniform would smell of ashes. But something about it almost made him uneasy—the ashes and the fire. Almost as if it was a curse of some kind, a punishment or reminder. When the words formed, it sounded ridiculous, but just when his thoughts wandered, it made some sense. Not to say that the scent was unbearable. It had a small pleasantness about it, but that could always have been the leather mixed in. After a while, he shrugged this off and decided that it was a neutral scent.

Did the Doctor know what he smelled like? Probably not, he reasoned to himself; nobody notices their natural (assuming that this burning sensation was natural) scent. Maybe he was the one that found their natural scents intriguing. He mentally laughed at the thought of this, wondering if maybe he smelled like booze and sex, convinced that sex had a smell. The leather was a nice touch. If the jacket hadn't been there to swirl in with the wood, then perhaps he _would _think the smell too unnerving to be around. It was dangerous. But then, he was used to a bit of danger. He was used to a lot of danger, too. Even if he went down in flames, the kind of flames associated now with the Doctor, it wouldn't matter to him. Perhaps he'd ask Rose about it later. Surely she'd noticed something.


End file.
